


Second Skin

by Eyanril



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, F/M, GingerRose Kink Weeks, Gingerflower, Gingerrose - Freeform, Mildly Dubious Consent, Probably both Hux and Rose are OOC oh well, Rose Tico Deserved Better, Rose pov, Uniform Kink, no betas we die like men, passing mention of possible pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26038111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyanril/pseuds/Eyanril
Summary: Slated for execution, a last minute change of plans leaves Rose a prisoner of General Hux.  He may be her captor, but Rose is a smart woman.  How long will it take her to gain the upper hand?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 23
Kudos: 83
Collections: GingerRose Kink Weeks





	Second Skin

**Author's Note:**

> GingerRose Kinks Week Day 1: Uniform/Glove Kink
> 
> I'm late to the party (par for the course with me!), but I had a lot of fun writing this and it ended up being a lot longer than I originally intended. I love this pairing! 
> 
> It's not super explicit, but rated E to be better safe than sorry.
> 
> I also have never had to do the tag thing before (see end notes), so if there's something that jumps out at you that should be included, speak up and I'll add it.

_You vermin may draw a little blood with a bite now and then, but we will always win._

Even as the transports containing her coworkers and friends are obliterated in the background, it's these words, dripping with contempt from the General’s lips, that push Rose over the edge. 

The leather of his glove tastes like ash in her mouth, but she holds on, digs her teeth as deep as she can into the fabric, into his flesh. They say he is a rabid cur, but she is the one acting the part now, clinging, growling through her clenched jaw. He holds her head, trying to push her away, to disengage her grip. When she finally lets go, it's because she wants to, not because he made her.

At least that’s what she tells herself, later, as the ship explodes around them.

Spitting, Rose expects the General to order the execution as he stands there, shaking his hand as if it can dispel the sting of her bite. The stormtroopers at her shoulders seem just as perplexed as she feels when, instead, Hux motions for them to follow. They drag her a few feet, half standing, before she gets her footing. 

“Do what you like with him,” he tells Phasma. Although the Captain’s face is hidden by her chrome armor, Rose can almost feel the other woman smiling in triumph. 

“Finn!” she screeches, struggling, watching as her friend remains kneeling in front of Phasma. The crackle of electroblades chases after them, and Rose calls his name once more in desperation. Then the troopers drag her around a corner, and he’s gone from sight. Maybe gone forever. 

She turns her focus to the man in front of her. Hiis long lean body jutting up towards the ceiling in a way she has always envied, and his stride eats up the ground. She slows the troopers down, taking two steps for every one of his.

He pauses suddenly, lingering at a turbolift entrance. Is he going to put her back in a holding cell? Is he going to have them throw her out an airlock?

“Sir?” The troopers fidget, awaiting his orders. 

Slowly he turns, looks at her. She can see he is making silent calculations in his head, weighing his options. 

“Take her up to my quarters.”

The instruction, given with such nonchalance, as if it is perfectly normal for him to request female prisoners to be sent to his personal rooms, frightens her.

But as the troopers wrestle her around, towards the turbolift, the floor cants, and the ship _screams._

Rose tumbles sideways, slams into the wall and then to her knees. The troopers scramble up but don’t seem to know what to do, until his voice rises above the din. 

“To my personal escape craft. NOW!” he bellows when they hesitate.

“Sir, should we...?” One gestures to her prone form with his blaster, and for the second time that night, Rose thinks she is seconds away from death. 

“Bring her. Quickly.”

The struts and girders around them groan in protest as they hurry along the halls, past buckling metal panels and exposed wiring that spits sparks. The hangar bay they approach is small, with only a few docks. Two of the ships are already gone, and the one that remains is meant for a single person. He situates himself in the pilot’s seat and beckons the troopers closer.

Hux takes her arm himself. As he pulls her into the craft, as she starts to fight being crammed into such close quarters with him — _I’d rather be left to die_ , she thinks — she feels the sharp prick of a needle sliding into her neck. 

“I’ve got her. Thank you for your assistance, TK-2398, MB-498. I suggest you find a way off this dreadnought.”

She tries to speak, but her tongue is too heavy, the air too close as the hatch lowers, sealing them in, together.

“Hush now,” he whispers in response to her incoherent protests, initiating the launch sequence.

The last thing Rose feels before she blacks out is his body next to hers, and his fingers softly stroking her hair.

**

Sensations trickle back to her slowly: the sound of someone tapping on a datapad. The smell of tea steeping. For a moment, she almost fools herself that she is back on the _Raddus_ , having fallen asleep in the crew common area. Her limbs loosen and she opens her eyes to the low light of an officers’ personal quarters...but the ship she’s on is clearly not Resistance. Too sleek, too polished, too _new_.

“You’re awake.”

He sits across the space in an armchair, right ankle propped on the opposite knee, datapad in one hand and steaming mug in the other. Looking entirely too comfortable while she’s slumped, half-conscious, over his sofa.

He’s almost handsome when his long, pale face isn’t twisted in a sneer, even with the beautiful red hair, so unusual, slicked into submission. His eyes are green or hazel — she isn’t sure from this distance — and sharp, like a raptor’s. Hyper intelligent. Ever watchful. _Predatory._

“What the kriff did you give me?” She stumbles a bit over the words. Flexes her limbs; she’s still bound at the wrists, but they cuffs aren’t as restricting as before.

“A sedative. I couldn’t very well have you thrashing around the escape craft as I piloted it.”

Rose’s mind races, connecting the dots. “And now we’re...”

“On the _Finalizer_ ,” he supplies, his tone mild. His eyes never leave her as she stands shakily. Catches her breath as she finds her footing and the room settles around her. She walks to the door and tries the mechanism. _Locked, of course._ Her mind darts to Finn, last seen on his knees in front of Captain Phasma, and she wheels, stalks to stand directly in front of him.

“The man you captured with me, the deserter. Is he—”

“Dead? I presume so. The Captain too, apparently. The impact tore the _Supremacy_ in half. They’ll be picking apart the wreckage for months.”

She cannot stifle the sob that escapes her throat. He looks away then, taps the arm of his chair. 

_The uncomfortable emotions of women._ She forces herself to cry harder, to put all the rage and sorrow at all the life lost in this stupid war into her sobs. _Paige...probably Finn...everyone on those transports blown out of the sky..._

It startles her to suddenly feel the slide of his palm on her upper arm, and she gulps in air, shudders. He has abandoned the datapad and his tea on the side table. “Lucky we escaped when we did, isn’t it, pet?”

She bristles at the endearment and his touch, considers taking a chunk out of his other hand, but he pulls it away before she can decide. 

She settles for pressing the matter of her stayed execution. “I don’t understand why you stopped them from blasting my head off. Especially after...” She tips her head toward his right hand, encased in the leather of a fresh pair of gloves that bear no mark of her aggression.

“Hmmm,” he murmurs, and slowly pulls the glove off. Displays his index finger and the bandage that now adorns it. “Your defiance even in the face of death amused me. As I said before: you may draw blood occasionally, but did you really think such a little bite would make a difference, Miss Tico?”

Her name on his lips sends another shudder through her. “You know who I am.”

“Oh yes,” Hux says, smirking. “I know all about you. Your silly mission. Your beloved sister, who died for your precious Resistance. You Rebel scum alway seem to forget that we can bite back.” He lets out a low chuckle, slips his hand back in the glove. 

Rose isn’t stupid, but she still doesn’t understand. “So...if you know who I am, you know that I’m just a cog in the machine. I’m not privy to war councils or strategy meetings. I’m worthless, really. Expendable. Why keep me alive as a prisoner of war?”

He clears his throat now, not quite as comfortable any more, it seems. His voice is quiet, but trembles a little under the weight of the words. “I have my reasons.” His eyes trail down her body, lingering in all the typical places, but especially at her full breasts, accentuated by the cut of the teal officers’ uniform she still wears.

_Oh._

_All men are the same,_ she thinks. _Disgusting pigs._ If she had a blaster, she’d shoot him point blank for even making the suggestion.

Her mind whirs... _unless?_

She doesn’t have a blaster, or a blade. 

But Rose has other weapons.

She sinks to her knees, knocking his crossed leg down in the process, and instinctively he shifts forward in his seat and reaches out, steadies her.

Even with bound hands she manages to loosen his belt. 

“What—” he begins, chokes off the words with a groan when she touches his cock through the fabric of his trousers. Only half hard, but it’s a start. She strokes, and he doesn’t move or push her away, so she undoes the zipper and coaxes him out — smooth, solid and growing more erect by the second. Pauses, waits for him to put a halt to her ministrations, surely aware of what she’s about to do.

Hux doesn’t stop her.

When she takes him into her mouth, the slow, choppy exhale of the breath he had been holding, and his fingers winding in her hair, tell her all she needs to know.

He’s too large to bury to the hilt all at once, so she takes it slow, starting at the head. Using a little teeth now and then, just to see his reaction. He doesn’t flinch, to his credit, just lets her get on with her work. 

The slide of her tongue along his length, the suck of her lips as she draws him deeper, elicits small noises of appreciation. Ones she knows he is embarrassed to make, but can’t stifle all the same.

They always told her she had a smart mouth; a clever tongue. She uses them now, until his fingers tighten in her hair and his quiet hums become grunts. 

He is insistent, his fingers and his vocalizations begging for more, but never rough. Never forcing himself down her throat the way some men might. This gentleness, this willingness to let her perform this act on him — for him — and not try to assume control, surprises her.

As she gazes up at him from her knees, she expects his eyes to be closed, lost in the pleasure. Instead they are open, catching hers in their fire, capturing her much like she now holds him captive with tongue and teeth. Grey-green and full of life and something else she can’t quite place. She has to look down again, intent on her task, or risk faltering.

When he comes in her mouth with a groan, the tang isn’t unpleasant. Salty. Slightly bitter. She swallows, licks up what’s left on his cock. Sits back, eyes down, playing at demure. Waits for him to say something...anything.

 _Tell me what a good girl I am,_ she thinks. _Ruin it with words meant to demean, to put me in my place._

His hand cups her chin, the leather soft against her skin, and tips her face so her gaze meets his.

She recognizes it then: the look in his eyes that eluded her before.

Awe. 

This red-haired man with the iron jaw and cunning gaze is in awe of her: a lowly mechanic from Hays Minor, Rebel scum, a scurrying rat of a woman. A common weed with a sweet name that doesn’t fit. 

As she squirms internally under his reverence, she feels something well inside of her, something lying dormant just under the surface.

She can feel the power she has over him. 

And, worst of all: she realizes she _likes_ it. 

**

Upon registering he wasn’t going to let her go, Rose expects him to hold her down with his lean but muscular limbs, to take what he wants from her on a nightly basis. She expects violence: retaliation for the bite that, even with the healing properties of bacta at work, leaves a semi-circular scar on his right index finger. She expects many things, all far from what actually transpires in the following weeks.

General Hux keeps her like a pet, confined to his quarters. Feeds her three times a day, not on scraps but on wholesome but bland food that doesn’t upset her stomach. She is free to roam the rooms, to use the fresher and savor the hot water whenever she wants. To sleep in his bed all day, if she so chooses. Her lot in life has been reduced to acting a part, more akin to a pampered feline than the rodent to which he compared her so readily.

And he strokes her, too, when he is stressed, which is often now that the man he fears has taken the reins of this empire. She doesn’t think he means to let _that_ particular detail slip, but one day in frustration he makes a reference to Supreme Leader Ren, his nose wrinkled in distaste. Rose fills in the blanks. She can easily guess the days he is required to interact with his loathed superior directly, because on those nights he is a little needier, a little more insistent with his caresses. He comes in silently, sits on the couch or on the edge of the bed and waits for her to approach of her own accord. She does it for him, but a little for her, too: a human connection, even with her captor, is a precious thing when all she sees all day are domestic droids who deliver food and take away dirty clothes. His gloved hands linger on her golden skin, growing paler every day she spends in the confines of the star destroyer, and his touch on her body is never anything but gentle.

Even when he finds her elbow-deep in the wires running behind the bedroom wall, having pried a maintenance panel off when he was away, he doesn’t punish her. Doesn’t restrain her, doesn’t withhold food or water. One side of his mouth quirks in amusement, even as he draws her away, touching the singed ends of her fingertips to his lips, letting his tongue dart out to sooth the burnt pads.

She tells herself he wouldn’t respect her if she didn’t try.

Instead he begins to bring her little projects: mouse droids that need fixing, schematics that need to be copied. She thinks it is an especial quirk of his: that he likes things done by hand, the old-fashioned way. It takes her awhile to realize he is trying to find ways to challenge her. To occupy her time and her mind. 

As for time, she doesn’t know how much has passed; she has no way to mark it other than to watch the minutes tick by on the clock and to count meals, and even with her sharp wit, she loses track. One day she asks him, with as much nonchalance she can muster, what day it is.

“It is Wednesday,” he answers, deliberately obtuse, but she takes it. She’ll take any scrap he will give her, filing them away, because he’s already taken everything else from her.

**

Although he might have her naked at all times, here in his quarters and at his mercy, he likes it when Rose wears the stolen uniform. The teal jodhpurs and jacket fit her surprisingly well for pieces she plucked, freshly-laundered, from the requisitions office during her infiltration. She has an eye for fashion, apparently, despite spending half her life in a shapeless khaki jumpsuit. The formal clothing, all tight stitches and perfect seams, is a layer of protection she doesn’t need now that she is no longer under the scrutiny of thousands of First Order soldiers and sycophants, but it keeps her warm in his chilly chambers, and she likes the shy smile _he_ wears when he sees her in it.

Still, she learns — very quickly — when to take it off. 

At first, every encounter begins much like the first. Like clockwork he returns from his duties at 2300 hours, and Rose is waiting for him, collar already loosened. She lets him touch her, and eventually she ends up naked or nearly so, on her knees, his cock in her mouth. She sucks him off, growing more skilled with every experience. She swallows, never spits. She lets him lift her back to her feet and lead her to the sprawling bed. He showers, and then she lies next to him, sedate, as he scrolls and taps on his datapad, the soft blue glow of the screen too high above her to read what is on it. She sleeps, but she’s not sure if he ever does. He’s always awake when she returns to her senses in the morning.

Every night is the same, until one night it isn’t.

Hux is a half hour late, and she watches the clock, on edge. Something has happened: perhaps the Resistance has finally managed to throw a wrench in whatever megalomaniacal plans Kylo Ren is cooking up this cycle. Perhaps someone will finally come for her. Perhaps not. She may die here, on this ship, her friends never knowing where she has been this whole time, and whose company she is keeping. 

When he stalks through the sliding doors, he barely spares her a glance, only mutters to himself. Goes straight to the ‘fresher, emerges ten minutes later in a towel, his slender form still glistening. Droplets fall from his red-gold hair onto the floor. He sits at his desk like this, still dripping, and punches away at the screen of the datapad, his jabs particularly forceful. 

_Curiosity killed the cat,_ but she can’t let it go. She needs to recapture his attention, no matter the cost. 

“What’s wrong?”

He looks up, startled, as if he has forgotten she exists until this very moment. That hurts a little, she won’t lie.

“Nothing...it’s just—” He bites off the words. “Nothing.”

She approaches slowly, slides her palm across his bare shoulders, feels the lean muscle beneath the pale skin.

“Tell me.”

She watches him contemplate: half-truth or lie. He’d never tell her everything, and she’s not shocked when his answer is typically vague. “I had a very unproductive day. That’s all.” He sighs, then motions to the bedroom. “You don’t have to wait up.” When she doesn’t budge, his tone grows terse. “I’m not in the mood.”

“What if _I’m_ in the mood?” she asks. Dangerous, to talk back to him, but Rose had never been afraid of taking risks. She had proven that her first night as a prisoner: bite first, blow job next. 

His eyes travel down her body: throat, breasts, stomach. Thighs and what lies between them. She has always been the instigator up to this point; he has never taken her, even though she can see in the way his eyes waver over her form that he wants to. All he needs is permission, and a little push.

When he finally speaks again, his voice is laced with lust. “Rose...are you sure?” 

In response, she takes his hand and places it on her breast. Holds it there until he takes the initiative, groping at the flesh. Even through the thick fabric of the jacket, his touch burns.

The datapad is pushed aside as he hoists her onto the desk. He still towers over her, still has to crane his neck down to put his lips on her throat. 

“Rose…” he murmurs, savoring her name. “If—” He is desperate to give her an out, even with the hand she put on her breast still there, the other roaming south along the flaps of the jacket, pushing them aside.

“I’m sure, General.” She watches desire bloom in his eyes, amplified by her use of the honorific. A reminder that he is above her, in more ways than one.

One hand kneads her breast, the other dips beneath the waistband of her jodhpurs, seeking the treasure hidden there. He uses his teeth now, on her neck, pinpricks that send shivers up her spine.

She moans as he finds her clitoris with a deft digit, strokes back and forth, whispers in her ear: “I’m going to make you come harder than you’ve ever come, pet.” 

“Do you promise?” 

He nods against her neck, a soft chuckle escaping his lips. “Oh, I promise.”

She could tell him that she’s never orgasmed with a partner before, that her own feeble fingers are nothing compared to the promise of his cock, already standing at attention under the towel. She could tell him that she is already dripping from want: that no other man has ever made her feel like this. She’s sure he would like to hear these confessions at some point, but not now, when he is lifting her and carrying her to the bed.

 _He’s stronger than he looks,_ she thinks, encircled in his arms. _Well, so am I._

She has one more weapon, one untouched until now. He has stripped her down to nothing and beholds it, the awe returned to his face. He says something she doesn’t quite catch: _so beautiful_ , perhaps. She’s never really spent much time thinking about it, so she’ll take him at his word. 

A finger slides into her heat, then two, pumping carefully, working up the slick of her so she’s ready to take him. And then, suddenly, all of him at once pushes inside her, and the sound of satisfaction from his lips is one of the most delicious Rose has ever heard.

“Oh gods,” he groans as he begins to move, “Darling, you’re—” He doesn’t finish: she cuts him off with a clench of her cunt, sets him choking on the words. “ _Fuck._ ”

It doesn’t take long, hips pistoning against her, before he is coming, hissing through gritted teeth. A warmth spreading inside her, unobstructed by contraceptives. She can feel the spill of his semen on her thighs as he pulls out and away, as he sinks onto his side next to her.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pale complexion ruddied with lust and embarrassment. “I didn’t expect it to be that quick. It’s been…” He licks his lips. “Quite some time.”

“As long as you keep your promise,” she replies, and she enjoys watching a true smile grace his features.

“Of course, pet.”

And he does: coaxing her to climax with his lips and tongue. A mirror of the service she has provided him every night since her capture. He seems eager, at least, to return the favor now that she has given him the impetus. His tongue is clever, too, she discovers, writhing under his diligent attentions, hands fisted in the blankets. 

She shrieks when she comes undone, sounds she didn’t realize she was capable of making. The waves roll through her abdomen and her thighs, so much stronger than those she can elicit alone, and she knows she’ll never be truly satisfied with her own machinations again. 

Rose opens her eyes to find him hovering over her, waiting to lower his lips to hers. She tastes both of them, mingled together: her slick sweeter than his spend.

“I—” He wants to tell her things, in the fog of fulfillment: she can see it in the warm green of his eyes, and in the way the skin at the corners crinkles. Secrets, maybe, or other soft things. But she stops him. 

She has everything she needs now. He curls into her and she kisses the crown of his head where it lays on her breast. 

The First Order may be winning the war, but in this battle between him and her, she is victorious.

**

The days bleed one into another, filled with fucking and a growing fondness Rose can’t ignore. She enjoys the way his lip curls into a snarl when he comes inside her, and the tender way he touches her afterwards, his pale fingertips brushing against her golden-cream belly.

Eventually, she begins to worry about another matter beyond her self-prescribed mission, one she never expected to have to contemplate.

Two-year contraceptive implants were standard issue in the Resistance — periods were messy; babies were messier — but Rose couldn’t remember the date of her last implant. She swears she sees a bump, but perhaps it is the steady diet, solid sleep and lack of caf-fueled all-nighters that are the cause.

“You needn’t worry yourself,” he says quietly, when he catches her standing naked before the ‘fresher mirror, stretching to view her abdomen from several angles.

“No?” 

“No. I made sure long ago that I’d never burden any woman with my offspring.”

She cannot help but ask: “Never?” 

Something sparks in his eyes, the tinder of what might have been caught alight as easily as that. And then he extinguishes it just as quickly, shaking his head. “Sterility suits me fine.” He reaches out, runs his fingers along her side, up to cup her breast. “It’s easier this way, don’t you think?” The unspoken words ring in her ears: _we don’t have to pretend this is anything other than sex. That this will ever blossom into anything more._

“Yes,” she lies, and she sees the ghost of something sad in his smile. 

They are both deceiving themselves, she thinks.

**

The first time he leaves his datapad unattended on the desk, Rose ignores it. A momentary lapse, one she doesn’t think she’s quick enough to exploit. She watches quietly as he leaves through the sliding doors, pretends she doesn’t notice when he rushes back in five minutes later and retrieves it. 

When he forgets it a second time, it takes him longer to realize his mistake. She feigns surprise when he returns, grinning sheepishly like a boy at his error. He kisses her before he disappears again.

His expressions are softer around her now, even when they aren’t having sex. His posture is less ramrod straight, his speech less clipped. Slowly but surely, she is making him forget himself when they are together.

She forgets herself sometimes, too.

But the third time he slips up, he is gone for an hour before Rose dares slide the device onto her lap, to bring up a universal comms channel. A tiny line of code, spliced into that of the First Order, and she’s out. She broadcasts a distress signal, using Paige’s personal code.

_That ought to get their attention._

And then she begins digging through files: schematics, missives, flagging anything she thinks might be of use.

Almost twenty minutes pass before a message appears on the screen.

**Paige Tico is dead — her personal code is defunct. Who is this?**

She has no idea who’s on the other end, but hopes it is someone important enough to take her seriously. **Her sister. I’ve been a prisoner of the First Order, aboard the** **_Finalizer_ ** **since...What day is it?**

**Rose! Are you kidding me? You’re alive?! It’s Dameron.**

**Hello, Poe. Yeah, I’m alive. Is Finn...is Finn with you? Did he escape?**

**He’s here and he’s doing fine, Rose. He was a little banged up, but he recovered. Worried about you, though. We all were.** **_How_ ** **are you still alive?**

 **Luck.** Half-truths...she had learned that from the General. **How long has it been, Poe?**

**Six months, Rosie. It’s been almost six months.**

She sits slack-jawed. It hadn’t felt like that long, especially once she and Hux had started indulging in their baser needs on a regular basis. It has taken her six months to break down his defenses, _six months_ for him to make the mistake she needed him to make. She’s not going to waste this opportunity.

**Stand by. I have a ton of information I can try to transmit. Can’t promise I’ll have time to send it all before I get caught, but...here goes.**

**Caught? Rose, be careful, don’t—**

She stops reading the messages after that, just starts funneling data across the connection.

And, inevitably, Rose gets so wrapped up in the process of sift-sort-send that she fails to notice the doors sliding open. She doesn’t hear his footsteps until he is wrenching the datapad from her hands and flinging it across the room.

It smashes into the wall. Breaks into a dozen pieces. 

He catches her wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt, grinding the delicate bones together as he yanks her to her feet. _There’s a first time for everything,_ she reasons, even as she cries out.

“What do you think you’re doing?” His face is red, his full lips curled in a vicious snarl both so alike and unlike the face he makes during sex that it confuses her for a moment, and she’s caught between wanting to laugh and wanting to cower. 

But it’s a stupid question: she knows _exactly_ what she’s doing. She’s been preparing for this for six months, after all. She just didn’t expect it all to go to hell quite this quickly. She didn’t expect these particular complications to come up.

She giggles because she cannot help it. Fear is rising in her breast, her heart beating like a bird’s. 

_This is it,_ she thinks. He’s finally going to snap, finally follow through with that pesky execution he ordered all those months ago. It doesn't matter that she’s fallen in... _No._ Best not to go there, not when he is crushing her wrist and breathing, hard, as he glowers down at her.

He is _so_ tall. She forgets sometimes, when their bodies are entwined, that he could break her if he wanted.

But he won’t do it himself, of course: he never gets his hands dirty, and this time would be no different. She closes her eyes and waits to be dragged to the door, to stumble the halls of the ship for the first time in half a year as he pulls her along. Waits for the blow or blaster bolt that she deserves, ending her pitable life before it had hardly begun.

When Hux finally speaks, the words are soft and full of pain: “I trusted you, pet. I—”

“That was your mistake,” she bites back. “Once a rat, always a rat. You said as much yourself.”

Hux shakes his head: he no longer believes the rhetoric.

Moments pass, their gazes locked, before he sinks onto the couch, bringing her with him. His touch gentles, his fingers rubbing her bruised wrist.

“Kiss me,” he demands, breathless. “Kiss me like you mean it.” He dips his head, ashamed. Begs: “Please, Rose. Even if it’s a lie.”

Saddened to see him so reduced, she complies. She pours her damaged soul into the kiss, deepening it when he hesitates to do it himself. _It’s not a lie. It’s—_

That night she rides him with wild abandon, taking what she wants until he spends himself inside her, and in spite of her own earth-shaking orgasm, still she is unsatisfied. She makes him use his fingers to coax her to a second, then his mouth for another. By the time she is shuddering through the third, she is rubbed raw and still feels like there is something monumental missing. Hux pants, catching his breath beside her, and there is a questing quality to his gaze. Concern furrows his brow. And yet she knew if she asked him to fuck her again, he’d find a way to do it, even if his cock wouldn’t comply. It lay curled against his thigh, shrunk into itself. Unthreatening. 

Rose wonders again why men rule the galaxy when all it takes is that burrow between a woman’s legs to render them so helplessly biddable.

What crazy thing could she ask of him, at this moment? And would he, without question, scramble to do it?

Exhausted, she dreams: they sit together on a jungle planet, gazing at the stars. He reaches out and takes her hand as she points out a streaking light that crosses the sky. She leans into his warm body, his black wool coat around her shoulders.

She is happy. _They_ are happy.

She wakes, gasping. Afraid she’ll rouse him, because — finally — he sleeps. Unable to stop herself clutching at his arms, wrapped around her, anyway. A tear trails down her cheek. Two-three-four join it...and more, and more and more. She cries silently until she can’t help but sniff, and he startles. 

She wriggles out of his embrace, slides out of the bed and pads a few steps on bare feet before his voice stops her.

“Are you alright? Rose?”

The plaintive way he says her name threatens to break her more thoroughly than his hands ever could.

“Go back to sleep, Armitage,” she says, sniffing again, swiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She hides in the ‘fresher for ten minutes before she gathers the courage and the composure to return.

Upon slipping back beneath the blankets, she finds him alert and aroused again. 

This time, she lets him do as he pleases. She was rough with him, so she thinks perhaps he’ll be rough with her. 

He isn’t. He goes slowly, gently, building the friction between them until they come one after the other, her moaning and his cries mingled together in a chaotic harmony.

The next morning the remains of the datapad have already been disposed of by a mouse droid performing its nightly cleanup, and they pretend like nothing has changed between them. That suits her fine. 

  
  


**

When the Resistance comes, two weeks later, Rose is unaware until the alarms begin to blare through the loudspeakers in the hall. She can hear them, muffled, where she is still lazing abed. He had left hours ago...she should have gotten up and gone to work on the latest project he has given her: reconstructing a BB-unit that had gotten caught, somehow, in a trash chute. But the feeling of dread that had built steadily since he caught her siphoning intel to the rebels threatened to overwhelm her in the early hours of the morning, as she watched him depart, so she stayed put.

Now she throws a robe on — his, silk and far too long for her — and paces. She can hear hurried footsteps rush past, and it isn’t until a few minutes of quiet tick by that she thinks to try the door.

It slides smoothly open. Unlocked, for the first time. 

Did the Resistance disrupt security on the whole ship? Did he forget to lock it? Did he _leave_ it open, on purpose? 

_No_ , she reasons. He would never let her go. _Would he?_

She can’t wander around half-naked, so she returns to his quarters and rifles through the clean laundry. Finds her underwear and bra, then considers the teal officers’ uniform, delivered this morning freshly pressed. It has become like a second skin to her: a disguise to cloak what she knows to be true about herself, to let her forget the past while she flourishes in his presence.

In the end, she can’t bring herself to put it on. It _belongs_ here; it will stay here. 

But she cannot.

In her desperation, Rose stumbles upon a pair of loose drawstring cargo shorts in the back of his closet — they’re a close enough approximation to pants on her diminutive form — and commandeers one of his black undershirts. She settles for sneaking out in sock-feet: it’ll be quieter, in any case.

In the cobbled together outfit, she almost looks herself again. Her hair, though, has grown past her shoulders and is far longer than regulation dictates. She plucks a piece of wire off the workbench and ties it up like she used to. Tries not to think about that first night, and his gloved fingers twining in the dark locks.

Free from her prison, she scurries along the wall like the rat they think she is, away from shouts and the sound of stormtrooper boots stomping along. Finds the turbolift...descends towards a lower level.

The doors open on chaos. 

Smoke everywhere, makes her cough as she shields her eyes. A dull verberation to her left — an unseen explosion. Dead bodies of troopers to her right, splayed on the dirtied white floor. The site of a distraction, possibly, but she couldn’t be sure. She flees back to the lift, shoots back up a floor. 

When the doors part, this time, she comes face to face with two people she thought she’d never see again.

Poe and Finn stood there, blasters trained on her chest. 

“Kriffing hell, Rose!” Poe exclaimed, dropping his weapon. 

Finn crossed the distance to her as she stepped out, sweeping her into a tight hug. His voice in her ear is different than she remembers — surer, steadier. “We went to the holding cells; we couldn’t find you. Where—?”

“No time,” she interrupts, accepting the spare blaster Poe is handing her. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We have to wait for the others... they’re trying to follow up on the data you provided—and maybe you know, assassinate that bastard Kylo Ren while they’re at it.”

“Then let’s wait at the ship,” she insists. It’s not Kylo Ren who worries her, in any case, as they settle into a jog. It’s her General: still calculating, still ruthless. Maybe even more so, when he’s discovered that she’s gone. The longer they linger, the less their chances of escape become likely. Don’t they know that?

But of course they don’t — they don’t know him like she does. 

A Corellian YT-1300f light freighter sits conspicuously in the hangar bay, looking like a derelict hunk of garbage compared to the other ships surrounding it. Just like everything and everyone in the Resistance, it does not belong here. She almost can’t blame Hux for wanting to erase it all, to rid the world of its blemishes.

Regret courses through her, and she has to remind herself yet again that she does not belong here, with him. Her hopes and dreams lie in another risk now, one she has already taken.

When the others rejoin them moments later, it is not empty handed: they have blueprints, directives, etc., all backed up on disk. She does not know any of them, and they eye her curiously, but accept her easily enough once she is properly introduced. Everyone is a friend in the Resistance.

“This is Rose. She’s a hero,” Finn supplies, detailing what had transpired on the _Supremacy_ all those months ago. “She bit that bastard right on the hand!” he crows, when he gets to the right part, nudging her shoulder.

Part of her is here with them, laughing along, supplying details that Finn has forgotten as they enter lightspeed. The smiles she wears don’t touch her eyes, but her audience doesn’t know her well enough to see that.

The other part is back there on the dreadnought, back there with him. 

_His fingers in her hair...his breath on her neck. His cock inside her...his caresses and kisses. His adoration. His awe._

She misses him already. Outwardly, she pretends everything is fine now that she is free. But on the inside, her despair is without depth.

**

The uniform lays on the bed where Rose left it, folded neatly. Atop it sits her medallion, the cord coiled beneath the teardrop of Haysian smelt. She hopes the glint of the metal will catch Armitage’s eye when he enters the room, will confuse and excite and enrage him, and then lay him low with longing, until he discovers its secret. 

On the rim of the medallion she has carved, in tiny script, Paige’s code. It was a task she had set herself the morning after she contacted the Resistance, accomplished in a single sitting while he was gone. She knows his sharp mind, knows he will understand immediately what she offers him.

A way to communicate with his enemies: enemies who could become allies, in time and with trust. 

A reason to get out, should he finally grasp that he, too, is just another cog in a machine, and that there is another option: a _better_ machine of which he can be a part. 

A place where he can be utilized and valued and _loved._

A way back to her. 

_Her heart._

She has given him everything he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Comments and kudos are very much appreciated! 
> 
> This is the first fanfic I've shared in roughly 12 years, so go easy on me! That said, constructive criticism is welcome. I feel like this probably could have used another editing pass and the beginning is a bit clunky, but at some point you kinda just have to say "okay, I'm done", you know?
> 
> Thanks again!


End file.
